It’s official, LinkedIn to go public

LinkedIn Corp. on Thursday filed plans to raise $175 million in a stock sale, becoming the first social networking company to formally announce plans for an initial public offering.

The Mountain View firm, which has more than 90 million members around the world, announced its intention to go public in an S1 form filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shortly after the close of the public stock markets.

LinkedIn separates itself from other social media firms by focusing on becoming a network used by professional workers.

But LinkedIn’s move signals an expected wave of social networking firms filing to go public in the coming months, including San Francisco’s Twitter Inc. and Zynga Games Network Inc., Chicago’s Groupon Inc. and the biggest fish in the pond, Palo Alto’s Facebook Inc.

In a boilerplate statement, the company said it intends to use the proceeds “primarily for general corporate purposes, including working capital, sales and marketing activities, general and administrative matters and capital expenditures.”

The company reported net income of $10 million on revenue of $161.4 million for the first nine months of 2010.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg News reported that SharesPost Inc. , a secondary exchange market for shares of privately own companies, was selling LinkedIn shares in an auction that valued each share at $30, taking the firm’s estimated value to nearly $3 billion. Participants were to be informed of the results of the auction Friday.

Chief executive officer Jeff Weiner and other officials have said in the past that an IPO could be one strategy the firm pursues to continue growing. LinkedIn is signing up new members at the rate of one per second, but believes there is a potential market of about 500 million professional workers around the world.

The site is free, but the company had become cash-flow positive behind paid programs such as a professional service offered to company recruiters searching for new talent.

The stock offering could benefit LinkedIn’s list of investors, which includes Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Joe Kraus and the Goldman Sachs Group, which just completed a $450 million investment in Facebook and has started a special Facebook investment fund worth $1 billion.